Carbon 9 – The Bull (2009)

When I was first introduced to the band Carbon 9, the first thing I saw and heard was their cover of Danzig’s “Mother”. I like that tune pretty well, and I thought Carbon 9 butchered a good song. Maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment, but I didn’t want to hear any more songs off of The Bull. I was a little too quick to discount this band, but decided to revisit their CD, at a later time, when I could look at it with a fresh perspective. I am glad I did, because the songs on The Bull are much better than the Danzig cover.

Carbon 9’s sound is a blend of industrial and modern hard rock. At first, I thought they were going to be another Nine Inch Nails clone, but their music might be closer to Dope than NIN.

“My Friend” offers up some cool guitar riffs, and some bass licks that wouldn’t expect to hear from a band of this genre.

“Somebody Like Me” is a heavy rocker has a catchy chorus that should help this song find its way to mainstream rock radio. The title track, “The Bull” is another radio ready rocker, that has some cool synthesizer effects in it. This is a good tune.

After hearing some of the songs on this CD, I understood this band quite a bit more. I have even grown to like their cover of “Mother” that once turned me off of this band.

“Butterflies in My Head”, “This Life” and “I’m Not Broken” are amongst my favorites on this disc as well.

“Tongues” the album closer is a bizarre ending to this disc. The song starts off with random outdoor sounds, and adds tribal beats, Indian chants and more. I am not sure what they were trying to accomplish with this song, but this was not the way to close out this CD.

Overall, I think The Bull is a solid debut effort for Carbon 9. If you like bands like Dope,Disturbed or Soulidium, chances are you will enjoy Carbon 9 as well.

You can give the song, “My Friend” a free test drive when you sign up for the band’s mailing list. Worldsound will give you a free download of the song, as well as let you stream songs from The Bull.

Rating:

Track Listing:

1. What It Is We’re Made Of
2. Crawling Over Me
3. My Friend
4. Somebody Like Me
5. The Bull
6. Mother
7. Butterflies in My Head
8. For You
9. This Life
10. Mary Mannequin
11. I’m Not Broken
12. Loving You
13. I’m on My Own
14. Lonely in Love
15. Tongues
Carbon 9 is: